


Things Carried

by inlovewithnight



Category: Hornblower (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-11
Updated: 2007-09-11
Packaged: 2017-10-17 21:35:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/181382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inlovewithnight/pseuds/inlovewithnight





	Things Carried

No man serves long in His Majesty's Navy without any scars.

Horatio knows that it is something of a legend among the men that he is untouched, unblemished, unmarked by his years in service. No flying splinters have dug into his flesh and been dragged free again, no swords have bit and slid away, no bullets have settled into muscle or shattered bone or even pierced the skin except for one, and that healed far better than it had any right to.

He's special, they mutter to each other, standing on deck and watching him out of the corners of their eyes. Got the Devil's own luck, Mr. Hornblower does. Always comes out without a scratch on him.

This is good, most likely. Almost certainly. Anything that can lend an officer an extra air of standing, an extra scrap of authority, should be attended to, since human nature is unfortunately _human_ and the men will not always follow for duty's sake alone. Pellew told him that, once, or perhaps more than once, it sometimes blurs together. It is good for an officer to seem set apart, a bit above, a bit special. Untouchable.

“Stop that,” Archie says, a hint of sharpness in his voice. Horatio looks up, blinking rapidly as he surfaces from his thoughts.

“Stop what?”

“You're standing at attention.” Archie shakes his head, smiling slightly as he pours the wine. “And you look like you expect a swift kick to the arse at any moment.”

“You rather sound like you might deliver it.”

“I'd prefer not to.” Archie's smile widens. “Honestly.”

“Mr. Kennedy.” Horatio rolls his eyes and accepts the offered glass, feeling his face settle into a familiar twist of exasperation. There's a certain comfort to this, a give and take of words as well-known as his uniform and the pitch of the ship beneath his feet, the faint sting of insult and balm of laughter. Something like a sea-anchor, he thinks, frowning at the fancy even as he indulges in it. The illusion of stability in high winds, a pretense built on the fickleness of water.

“Are we standing on formality, now?” Archie shakes his head and sips at his own drink, squinting out the window at rain-washed Portsmouth. “Pity.”

“You cannot claim that it is not safer.” This, too, is familiar and old, the symbolic protest, the comfort of well-worn figures and over-practiced words. The same comfort that others find in old plays, or church, he supposes, and another smile curves his mouth, the blasphemy sapped of all its illicit thrill long ago.

“You're welcome to your safety if you wish it. Your splendid isolation.” Archie is smiling as well, but there's a certain look in his eyes that suggests the game has not worn to comfort for him, but to annoyance. “Entirely up to you, sir.”

“I never wished for that.” The sharpness of his voice surprises them both, and Archie looks away, down into his wine. When he speaks again there's a forced lightness to his voice, an effort to steer them back to safe waters, and Horatio looks to his own glass, as if there are answers there.

“It was forced upon you, then?”

Horatio only shakes his head and swallows down the wine. No man serves without scars, he wants to say, without or within, on the body or on the mind and heart, and who's to say which digs deeper? Surgeons can't see the one, the polite eye turns away from the other, and the end result is a great many things left alone to ache in the last cold hours of dark.

“Is there a particular glory to standing always alone, Horatio? Or is it that alone you needn't share whatever glory might come along?”

“Have I done something to offend you?” Responding to questions with questions, or rather failing to respond to them at all, feels vaguely like a cheat, but it will certainly cut far more quickly to the heart of the matter. False colors and careful maneuvers with ships is one thing, but he finds more and more that he is required to do the same in conversation, and that he lacks the stomach for it.

“No.” Archie sighs and sets his glass aside, unfinished. “Only frustrate me.”

His next question is almost certainly the wrong one, yet he can't seem to resist the urge to ask it. “How so?”

Archie looks at him, jaw tightening slightly, eyes narrowing. “You seem quite determined to make yourself untouchable. Build a wall around you on your quarterdeck and rest on your laurels.”

The echo of his own earlier thoughts, unspoken and unexpected, startles Horatio into asking another question that falls somewhere between unwise and wrong. “And you object to that?”

“One day, Mr. Hornblower, you are going to annoy me to the point where I forget many years of friendship and mutual service.” Archie's words fairly drip with sarcasm as he reaches for his glass again, considers, then takes the bottle and drinks from it directly. “Do I object to your determination to be untouchable? Yes. I do. Because logically enough, Horatio, that makes it a great deal more difficult for me to touch you.”

Archie drinks from the bottle again, then draws the back of his hand across his lips, wiping away stray drops of wine. Horatio watches, unable to look away as Archie continues.

“It obliges me to work a great deal harder for what I want.” Archie sets the bottle aside again and then looks at Horatio, his eyes bright and sharp and cold as a sword's-edge. “Push and fight and scratch for it.”

“It's a well-known fact that one appreciates more what one fights for.”

“Platitudes.” Archie laughs, a soft huff of air and sound that holds very little humor. “Spare me those, Horatio.”

“It seems that I can do no right this evening, Archie.” Horatio watches the flush rise another fine degree in Archie's face, imagines the pulse quickening under his skin, then takes a careful breath and throws caution to the wind. “What precisely would you have from me, if you had your choice?”

“What would I have from you?” Archie steps across the floor toward him, slow and measured as if counted by a dancing-master and yet so far from courtly that it sends a shiver up Horatio's spine; this is far more predatory than polite. He settles his weight in his heels and stands his ground, waiting. “A spark hint of independence, perhaps, of rebellion.”

“Dangerous things,” Horatio says softly, his breath catching in his chest.

“Danger.” Archie says the word as if he is weighing it, tasting it. “Yes, that as well. I would have something dangerous.” Archie is close enough now that Horatio can feel the heat of him, promise and contrast to the chill in the air. “A shred of humanity would not go amiss.” Archie leans in, his breath fanning over Horatio's skin like candle flame over parchment. “A hint of mortal flesh.”

Horatio shivers again, knowing that Archie will notice this time and feed off the motion, draw it into his dark mood and eyes.

“That's what I would have, Horatio,” Archie says, his voice barely above a whisper. “Not impossible things, are they?”

“Not as such, no.”

“And yet here I stand, without them.”

Horatio draws a slow breath and meets Archie's eyes before he answers. “Then take them.”

Something flashes in Archie's eyes, realization and annoyance at having been an unwitting player in a game followed by pleasure at nonetheless emerging triumphant. His hand slides up Horatio's chest, catching the strings at his shirt-collar and drawing Horatio to him, into a hard, fierce kiss. Horatio lets him find the pattern of his victory, falling back step by step to the bed as Archie advances. Archie's hands are hot against him, and rough, pushing fabric out of the way and finding flesh, the blunt-cut edges of his fingernails scoring Horatio's skin.

Horatio welcomes the slight sting, and every touch that follows, the slide of skin on skin and the pressure that promises bruises alike. He would pull these things into himself if he could, wear them on his body like badges of honor.

It is not only Navy men who carry scars, but no man chooses what scars he will carry. The echoes of these moments made solid, made flesh, are what he would keep if he could. If he cannot have that, and he cannot have that, the best he can do is to carve them deep into his memory.  



End file.
